A 17-year-old brings a loaded gun to a local high school and the Intelligencer finds that "worrisome"
It has had nothing to say, however, about the increasing likelihood that 18-year-olds will legally be allowed to bring concealed weapons to WV Northern and West Liberty campuses
From this morning's Wheeling Intelligencer editorial, "Keeping Firearms Out of Our Schools":
City police say that when they went to Steubenville High School to question a student about an armed robbery, they found a loaded .40-caliber pistol in his backpack. Later, that 17-year-old and a 16-year-old were charged in the robbery.
How the boy managed to get a loaded gun into school ought to concern Steubenville school officials, especially in the context of several other gun violence situations involving juveniles in the city.
To our knowledge, none of those attacks occurred in the high school. Still, the very presence of a boy with a loaded gun is worrisome.
However, neither Wheeling "newspaper" has had anything to say about HB 2519 which would allow "a person who holds a current and valid license to carry a concealed deadly weapon to carry such a weapon on the campus and in the buildings of a state institution of higher education."
As I noted previously, the bill has little support from campus officials. Since that post, faculty and students at WVU have protested the bill and West Liberty University president Stephen Greiner has commented on the bill:
“This is my 18th year as a college president. I understand that campus safety is of primary importance and I have firsthand experience with a domestic incident at a prior college," President Greiner of WLU said in a statement. “I’ve lived every president’s worst nightmare, and I never ever want to do that again.”
Greiner said a triple homicide at a college in Hazard, Kentucky five years ago still haunts him, and he worries violent domestic disturbances like that are only more likely given the proposed legislation. Parents, staff and many students are also opposed and he says enrollment would definitely drop if the law is passed.
Those who work and study at the states institutions of higher learning be damned -- West Virginia Public Broadcasting says that the bill is an on a "fast track" for passage and West Virginia MetroNews' Hoppy Kercheval believes the bill will likely pass. The NRA, which has supported the bill from the beginning of the session, will be happy. Sorry, I find it more than a little "worrisome"and the best word that I can think of to describe the Wheeling Intelligencer is "hypocritical."
